Savoy, who was interested in archaeology as a child, left the University of Portland, in Oregon, after two years to enlist in the At age 17 Savoy enlisted in the U.S. Navy. After World War II he attended the University of Portland and worked briefly as a journalistin Portland, but he became eager to begin exploring after reading Hiram Bingham’s Lost City of the Incas (1952). Savoy moved to Peru and organized his first archaeological expedition in 1957.

Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, Savoy made a series of expeditions to Peru, discovering various Incan Inca and pre-Incan Inca archaeological sites. In 1964 he discovered Vilcabamba, the secret mountain stronghold where the Incas hid from Spanish conquerors in the 16th century. His discovery disproved Bingham’s notion that Vilcabamba and Machu Picchu were the same place. In 1965 Savoy took credit for the original discovery of Gran Pajatén, a pre-Incan Inca stone city, but this finding was contested by other researchers. In the late 1970s, Savoy sailed rafts of Andean design 1969 he sailed a raft of ancient Peruvian design from Peru to Panama in an effort to prove that the people of the Andes had contact with the Pacific coast of North America, and in 1997 he sailed a wooden catamaran from Peru to Hawaii to demonstrate that ancient Peruvians could have sailed on the open seas. His discovery of several thousand stone structures known as Gran Vilaya in 1985 proved that the Peruvian jungles—in addition to the Andes and the coast—had been locations of ancient settlement. Savoy wrote a number of books about his archaeological expeditions. Noted for his larger-than-life persona, he was dubbed “the real Indiana Jones” by People magazine.

Long fascinated with religion, in Savoy was also intrigued by the beliefs of ancient religious groups, especially those of the Essenes, an ascetic Jewish sect that apparently revered the Sun and (he believed) presaged the coming of Jesus Christ. Teaching that Christ’s Second Coming had already occurred, Savoy developed a theology that he called “Cosolargy.” According to Savoy, Christ is the “spiritual Sun,” a celestial force perpetually generating divine energy from the thought and will of God in order to regenerate the physical world. Illuminated by the “transformed sunlight” that carries this Christ force, human beings become spiritual coparticipants with God in the renewal not only of themselves but of the world. In 1959 Savoy established the International Community of Christ, Church of the Second Advent , which teaches that the Second Coming is already happening. Savoy to promote Cosolargy. Throughout his life he wrote more than 60 volumes on religious topics.